randomep

As I recall, Buffett said if he ran one million he'd find opportunities like a bachelor in a harem and therefore would be 100% invested.

What about Soros and the Quantum fund, doesn't that one have hundreds of holdings and an extraordinary record?

But how can he possibly get that done? He is a lame duck! Is he seriously thinking he can persuade the republican congress and senate to do as he says?

BAC

The fact is, most people, even those of us on this site who are reasonably knowledgeable and smart, will not beat the index over any long period of time, and certainly not consistently. That some people think it's easy sort of horrifies me. My sense is most non-professionals here realize this, but are happy to invest on their own because it's a) fun and b) isn't so costly (in terms of underperformance) that it will be disastrous to their lives. For the pros, I would say some are above average, and most are just trying to make a living, like everyone else. I strongly disagree. My goal and the goal of most long term investors is to beat the market overall, not necessarily beat it consistently (the word you used) Firstly, when I think of someone beating the S&P 500 I think of a graph showing performance starting say at age 28, when that person reaches 50 the graph will show results pulling away from S&P 500. That is NOT to say that the person beats the S&P 500 the majority of the years, he can lag the S&P500 say 25/40 years yet still pull away. The goal is to retire or die with the most money! If there are a huge set of people trying to beat the market then some are able to beat it using my definition above, who are those people, they are in the minority but they exist somewhere. When you say it is almost impossible to beat it, you are probably thinking of the same arguements are the efficient market people. Warren Buffett debunked that. I think that the majority of people in this forum know they can do it, but they can't be bothered bothering doing what is required long term so they instead cut some corners, and thus may wind up failing.

I don't know what is thinking fast and slow. But I commend you for knowing what you don't know. I work in tech and I see lots and lots of super high IQ brains. I am sure they can pick up security analysis and understand it inside and out. But I think the key to being a good investor is stepping outside of yourself and evaluating your skill and limitations. You are capable of matching the market, by buying an index fund. If you just know of a great thing that'll likely beat the market you can move some money from the index fund to it. And there you are slowing starting to beat the market. Again the key is judging whether you are right in your analysis and discounting for the unknowables and risks. I know this may sound obvious, but a lot of people miss that. I see some people on this board say with a serious face, they are targeting 60% annual returns. Like the other posters said, only when you are 90 will you be able to measure if you beat the market. Don't measure yourself year by year.

How much is Icahn worth?

I want to stop look at quotes every 15min.

Now I have been in In&Out more than once but I don't recall if I ate a burger or just watched my friends eat. But what exactly is so special about it? this is a serious question and I am looking for an objective answer, do they make it differently? use different cows? never frozen beef?

A thread asking people about their misses for the past year is by definition about hindsight. That's the point. My biggest miss of the past year is probably premature accumulation in a very illiquid OTC microcap. I thought it was very cheap, and it then proceeded to get much cheaper (volatility is pretty crazy, there's almost no float and the bid/ask is often 10%+). I think it's only a temporary loss, with fast-growing IV being much higher than the quoted price, and I'm comfortable holding it for the long-term, but I do wish I had been able to buy more at lower prices before getting to a full position. Liberty, you said you built a full position, so couldn't you tell us what this microcap is??

Well, definitely China is slowing down, beyond that I don't think this article adds much. The article says the car sales growth will be 7% instead of 14% last year, the dealers or manufacturers screwed up in their projections and should scale back inventory. but thanks for the article.....

On a related note: do the people here move stuff around between brokerages once the balance reaches over 500k or do you note care and have say 1M in a single account?

SIPC is not like FDIC, it is not backed by the us govt. So the SIPC protection on your brokerage account is not as good as FDIC. FDIC is backed by the full faith of the US govt just like treasuries IMHO. If you are concerned about protecting cash why don't you open multiple bank accounts. Also many brokerages have a sister bank. So then you can just park 250k it in the bank on top of your $500k brokerage protection. And transfering as I recall is instant between the brokerage and the sister bank. FDIC protects against anything that happens to your account. Bank robberies, inadequate reserves, bankruptcy. BTW I've experienced a FDIC rescue, I just got a letter and they told me transfer you money out ASAP please or else we'll mail you a check for your balance. SIPC is supposed to make you whole. So if you own a stock that is stolen by your broker SIPC will rescue you. SIPC also protected madoff investors although I don't know why so it is a grey area what is protected I think.

Thanks all for sharing your results and your secrets. I think my one takeaway from all this is you gotta concentrate for average-beating returns...... I am going to be more gutsy starting today.

IEHC

Well, a change of topic here, but you could say it for Pabrai too. I respect Berkowitz because being a banking specialist, he avoided banks in 08 which destroyed the likes of Miller.

Why? Cos I never heard of it! There you go then, use =XIRR() !! My concept is the same as XIRR but of course the spreadsheet functions does it all for you automatically! Thanks I learned something here everyday. BTW regarding fidelity, I don't trust their IRR numbers at all because I have no idea what the inner workings of their computation. I have several accounts and I move money back and forth and I remember seeing something like 43% for my fidelity account, there is no way I got 43% the account!

Actually I meant adding money into account. Say I have an monthly salary of 10K, and I need 7K for my monthly expenses, effectively I'm supposed to be adding 3K cash for investment every month. I might not have bought any stocks in the first 6 months since I could not find any opportunity. How do you include this 3K/month in the equation? Your brokerage account might do the calculation based on the cash available on the brokerage account. But I might not have moved my cash from my saving account to my brokerage account until the opportunity arrived. When you calculate the yearly return, are the folks here adding the investable cash (3K/month in the example here) in the saving account as well? I think the most rigorous solution to your problem is to consider each deposit as a separate virtual account. All of your virtual accounts must have the same IRR (let us denote as R) over its lifetime, which is from when you deposited it to NOW. And the R is the rate such that all your virtual accounts add up to your actual account balance NOW. In your example you deposit 3k per month so say after 3 months you have 10k, then your R is expressed as 3*(1+R)^3 + 3*(1+R)^2 + 3*(1+R)^1 = 10 and the solution is R=6% per month or about 100% per year. My solution R is a rough estimate using spreadsheet although there is a closed form solution for this geometric sequence. I just plugged in the following into a cell in libreoffice (which should be compatible with excel) =FV(1+R,3,-3,0,0) and I tried various values for R until the result is closest to 10. The second last term of the FV() formula is the initital condition, so you can also plug that in. This is the method I use to calculate my return over various periods of my investment career. Let me know if you have comments or if I am confusing you....

I am not a fairfax holder but happy holidays to you too!

European Reliance (insurance) ATH:EUPIC, trades at 4x earnings, about 65% of book. Only problem is it is in Greece!

I do want to hear some horror stories. Post here or PM Make that 2.

NO NO NO I predict Russia will join NATO.

If you're really ultra high net worth, I'm available. I'll have to ask my wife if it's ok first, though. I think he wants to marry a woman...... just a hunch.....

Great question. All of us have tax-sheltered retirement accounts and non-retirement. I find that many of my biggest winners are in my non-retirement account. I suspect I only got my 3-baggers and 4-baggers because I just dreaded paying capital gains. If they were in my retirement account I probably would have sold. Buying and selling stocks is not black and white, it is just a balance scale on which you put your pros and cons and also your margin of safety and any other factors including taxes. Taxes is a big issue for me and it would tilt my mind towards holding. The flip side is also true, taxes also caused me to hold, much to my regret. A few weeks ago I saw a 133% jump in one of my hong kong stocks. I held on because I couldn't bear paying 40% tax. And in an instant the opportunity was gone. I just know I would have dumped it all if it was in my IRA. Incidentally I just learned from another thread that I could hold the HK stock in an IRA, oh crap too late for this one! To see the post about the stock: http://bovinebear.blogspot.com/2014/12/what-just-happened-in-hong-kong.html

Real estate! China has over 100 billionaires, I suspect 90% got it of real estate. Same for the majority of HK billionaires. I guess more than half of the world's assets is real estate, and someone has to own them.